The attention, therefore, of our commander was now directed to other important and necessary concerns.
It was of great consequence to meet with a place where our navigators might be supplied with wood and water.

But the point which principally occupied the captain's thoughts was, how he should spend the winter, so as to make some improvements in geography and navigation, and, at the same time, to be in a condition to return to the north, in farther search of a passage, in the ensuing summer.
Before Captain Cook proceeded far to the south, he employed a considerable time in examining the sea and coasts in the neighbourhood of Beering's Strait, both on the side of Asia and America.

In this examination, he ascertained the accuracy of Beering, so far as he went; demonstrated the errors with which Staehlin's map of the New Northern Archipelago abounds; and made large additions to the geographical knowledge of this part of the world.

'It reflects,' as Mr.Coxe justly observes, 'the highest honour even on the British name, that our great navigator extended his discoveries much farther in one expedition, and at so great a distance from the point of his departure, than the Russians accomplished in a long series of years, and in parts belonging or contiguous to their own empire.' On the 2nd of October, our voyagers came within sight of the island of Oonalashka, and anchored the next day in Samganoodha harbour.

Here the first concern was to put the ships under the necessary repair; and, while the carpenters were employed in this business, one third of the people had permission, by turns, to go and collect the berries with which the island abounds, and, which, though now beginning to be in a state of decay, did not a little contribute, in conjunction with spruce-beer, effectually to eradicate every seed of the scurvy, that might exist in either of the vessels.